Chef/owner Greg Vernick of Philly’s Vernick restaurant prefers a minimalist approach in the kitchen. “An oyster defines our whole restaurant philosophy,” he says. “It doesn’t need anything if you can source the greatest oyster and properly shuck it. That’s how we think—just get the best possible product and not do a whole lot to it.” With that point of view, it’s extraordinary how much thought and effort goes into Vernick’s cooking. He shares the secrets and stories behind his award-winning menu:

Organic Amish Whole Chicken with Lemon & Herb Jus (above): “Chicken is not always taken seriously. It’s often a safety dish on menus, and a lot of people don’t order it because they think it’s boring. But I always wanted to have chicken on the menu, so we built a wood-burning oven program around chicken. The process is a lot more than just seasoning. First, we buy a local chicken from a cooperative of farms that raise their chickens under very strict and humane guidelines. The chicken goes under a brine for 12 hours, and the surprise component is we steam it first at a really low temperature for about two hours to keep it nice and moist without putting any aggressive heat into the protein. Then we finish it in the wood-fired oven at a very high temperature to char the skin, and it comes out really crackly and crispy, but super moist on the inside.”

Whole Fish with Fennel and Orange: “I was inspired during my travels through Spain and Italy, where so many of my most memorable meals involved eating a whole, deliciously fresh fish right off the plancha, on a bone, with minimal garnish—just oil, lemon and sea salt. So we wanted to do a whole roasted fish—where it appears to be whole, but we actually bone out almost the entire fish just leaving the head and tail on. We buy the fish whole, with guts and everything, not eviscerated, and we create a nice pocket to stuff with fennel and orange. The greatest surprise is literally picking up the tail and the head and eating it like a chicken wing, nibbling on all the delicious bits. Every now and then you’ll see a 75-year-old woman put her fork and knife down and just attack it. It’s the greatest thing.”

Peas & Bacon on Toast: “The whole toast section was another thing that came about through Italy. We learned that the Panini culture is everywhere; so every day I’d try a couple different ones. Peas and bacon is a combo I knew I wanted to work with—salty pork with green vegetables is done in every part of the world: Chinese long beans and sausage, carbonara with peas in Italy. It’s such a natural combination, but we made several attempts at it and finally ended up with this one, which has been on the menu since the beginning. We played with it and ramen ended up being the inspiration. A lot of ramen shops blow torch the pork belly before they put it in the soup; so we blow torch the pork while it’s on the bread, on top of pea butter. But there’s multiple kinds of pork: one is classic cured pancetta that gets diced and rendered into crunchy bits, and then we drape the whole toast with thinly sliced smoked bacon…that’s what we torch. That torched pork belly flavor is just so awesome."

Sea Urchin with Scrambled Eggs: “Jean-Georges Vongerichten is the reason for this dish—I worked under him in NYC, and I had the opportunity to go with him to Japan. I didn’t realize raw fish was such a part of my curriculum until I left, but I wanted to show people my experience and a raw program that can be done without rice and soy sauce. So I thought of sea urchin, which I really fell in love with in Japan. I wanted to bring it to the menu, but I worried that people would be scared to order it. A classic dish at Jean-Georges is scrambled eggs with caviar. I used that as inspiration and built a dish around it. I wanted to convey urchin as accessible and delicious. First, we scramble the eggs really soft, whip yogurt and then top it with cold sea urchin. It’s got tremendous sweet, briny flavor, as we try to accentuate that ocean flavor by scrambling the eggs with shrimp butter, which is made from processed shrimp shells. It just works really well with cold yogurt and soft eggs—a bite of all three gives this great temperature texture thing in your mouth.”

Blueberry Pie: “I love the idea of someone getting a dessert and knowing exactly what they’re getting. We wanted to just nail an individual pie, but there was also this emotion that we weren’t sure if people would think it was boring, or that I was being lazy as a chef. But now I see that when people get their own mini pie, they all just smile. It just defines how I want people to finish off their dinner here—our food is simple and rustic, and the pie just provides this sense of comfort and joy that I really love.